"Golden Balls" Up?

Even Becks can't win them all, as he has been left out of the England squad by Fabio Capello.

3 is the magic number

(Photo from Michele Cat's Flickr page)


3 musketeers

3 blind mice

3 wishes from a genie

3 billy goats gruff

3 little pigs



With the power of 3 behind us, there's alot we can all achieve, whether it's in our personal or business lives.

Start with yourself.

What 3 things do you want to achieve:

• Today?


• This week?


• This year?

Pick one of the 3 things you want to achieve today. What 3 things are you going to do to further the progress towards each achievement?

Do the same for each of the other things you want to achieve.

Next, move on to your business. Reduce your business and its practises to the 3 core functions/principles. Then apply these 3 functions to 3 different areas of your business, e.g. marketing, client relations, project development. Then make 3 steps in each of the 3 areas you have chosen to improve your business.

By breaking down each step into 3 manageable parts, each step becomes less daunting, progress can be measured more effectively, and by reducing your view of your business to its 3 core fetaures, you are reducing your complicated business to its simplest form.

Allowing yourself to remember these 3 basic principles will allow you to be more effective in whichever area needs improvement.

If you want to take it further, look at 3 other people/business around you. What 3 things can you apply or learn from them that will benefit you?

3 more tips about the power of 3 from 3 different sources:

• Keep three lists of three. The first list has three things you will do today. The second is three things you’d like to get done, but aren’t essential. The third is three things that need to be done at some point. That way, when you’ve trogged through your days work, you don’t end up sitting twiddling your thumbs. (From Zen Habits)

• Three Weeks - that's as long as it takes to start reducing risks to your health with a lifestyle change. In a study of 31 overweight or obese men, half overcame their type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol after following a healthy diet and getting 45 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise one day a week for 3 weeks. And if you don't have 45 to 60 minutes to spare in one session, you could always break that time up into three shorter sessions and spread them out across the week. (From That's Fit)

• There are THREE Productivity questions I am interested in asking myself and my clients.
  1) What do you hold yourself accountable to?
  2) What is it you think you need to be doing more (or less) of?
  3) What are you NOT engaged in that is pulling your focus, distracting you, and making it difficult for you to get things done? (From Your Best Just got Better)

3 more links to the power of 3:

• Lazy Productivity: 10 Simple Ways to Do Only Three Things Today


• 3 Ways to Become More Productive by Drawing on Your Inner Artist


• What You Didn’t Know About the World’s Top Three Productivity-Enhancing Drugs

Beck's Appeal

David Beckham seems to has had a stroke of genius (or his management team has anyway...)

After losing the contract to advertise Gillette, Beckham's face is appearing across the UK (and probably the world) advertising Motorola's Razr 2 mobile phone.

The genius of the move is that he is still advertising a 'Razr', but he now appears in the ads sporting a stylish lil' goatee, openly flouting how he doesn't need Gillette razors now.

Not only this but part of the sales of Motorola's new line will be used for AIDS relief in Africa, adding capital to the Beckham brand.

I think Gillette have timed their move away from Beckham slightly wrong. Beckham is due to get his 100th cap for England soon (if Capello picks him for the squad) - what better time to pick up on some undoubtedly large media attention?

As for Gillette, they've enlisted the services of Roger Federer, Thierry Henry and Tiger Woods to advertise their products, billing their new TV advert as the 'Champions Ad':




The problem with the advert is that the captions that accompany the entrance of each champion makes the advert immediately outdated.

"2006 Wimbledon Champion" - Why didn't the advert say that he was 2007 Wimbledon Champion for the 5th consecutive year? The advert would have more of an impact if it fully used his impressive career statistics.

"2003 Footballer of the year" - Why not get Christiano Ronaldo to be the famous footballer? The list of his recent honours is up to date and more impressive than Henry's - why not capitalise on his current fame (especially considering last night's performance by Ronaldo)?

But I guess you can't argue with the choice of Tiger Woods - he just consecutively outperforms the rest in his field and is undoubtedly the most famous golfer around.

At the end of the day, Motorola made the right choice in signing Beckham and Gillette will lose out. If you don't believe me, it is reported that the only gadget currently outselling the iPod is the Motorola Razr.

Beckham and Motorola seem to have come out on top of this one, although Beckham's goatee is a little dodgy...

Just Poll It

It seems my bid to 'Just Say It' is proving a success.

Not long after publishing a post on the current relationship between journalism and PR, Gorkana is running a poll, posing the question "Certain academic literature suggests that journalists are increasingly reliant on PR led information subsidies when writing news - do you agree?"

The comments I received on my original post were very thought provoking, and I hope that this poll produces the same result. I'll be watching with interest.

"Green" British Gas ad is nothing but hot air

As reported in the Guardian today, a TV and press ad campaign for British Gas has been banned by the advertising watchdog for making false green claims about an energy tariff:

"In the ad a voiceover made the claim that "Our new dual fuel package is our greenest. With zero carbon." The Advertising Standards Authority received 14 complaints about the "zero carbon" claim because they believe it implied the energy was carbon free and did not produce carbon dioxide. British Gas said that the tariff was backed by 100% renewable electricity so that the net carbon emission impact was zero for each customer. The company added that small print at the foot of the screen said "Relates to offsetting schemes", which made clear that there were carbon emissions. However, the ASA said that the claim "with zero carbon" and the images in the ad would "likely be interpreted by viewers to mean that the energy was carbon free or produced no carbon emissions". The ad regulator ruled that the TV commercial was misleading and should not be shown again in the same form.

A second ad - a national newspaper advertorial, for the same "green" tariff - was criticised by the ASA for making the claim it was the "greenest domestic energy tariff". One complainant argued that the claim was misleading and could not be substantiated because there was no established independent way to assess the green credentials of energy tariffs."

This is yet another example of companies hopping on the CSR bandwagon, claiming that a product is 'green'. But when critics question the validity of this claim, the greenness is shown as nothing more than a facade. This problem has been documented before, when many products that have claims to being 'green' have no such foundation to claim as much.

This issue of companies taking up a facade of CSR was explored more fully in The Economist's recent Special Report on CSR, which reported that many companies were merely saying that they had implemented a CSR policy, rather than fully demonstrate and report on their efforts.

This hasn't been a good week for British Gas as earlier this week Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, said the energy market was uncompetitive and the price rises were unjustified.

"Sadly the market is not working well and that's leading to consumers paying much, much more than they need to," he said. (Link)

British Gas later admitted to the mistake, but this was obviously due more to damage limitation rather than good corporate communication.

"British Gas said that the ad pointed out the claim was based on the comparison of all current green supply offerings monitored by the Energywatch website. The company admitted that the website did not rank tariffs in order of "greenness" and that there was no industry-wide methodology."

The power of consumers to flag up a company's false 'green' claims is as prevalent as ever. Companies and organisations need to be aware that consumers will no longer be fooled by claims that cannot be backed up by hard evidence, especially in the realm of CSR. Those that realise this and prove transparent in their policies and communications will be the companies that prosper.

(For a summary of The Economist's Special Report on CSR, Steven Davies provides a good review here)

Lego Millenium Falcon Time-Lapse Video

3:38 of time lapse footage as Joel Johnson of Boing Boing assembles the "Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon" LEGO set, the largest yet sold, with over five thousand (5,000!) individual elements.

(Link)

Lego's 50th Anniversary

Often cited as one of the greatest toy inventions ever, LEGO bricks celebrate their 50th birthday today.

Here's a little on their history:

"The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". It’s our name and it’s our ideal. The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen.

The Company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.

It has come a long way over the past 70 years - from a small carpenter’s workshop to a modern, global enterprise that is now, in terms of sales, the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer of toys."

A vast amount of my childhood was spent playing with Lego - we had a 4 huge boxes full of Lego and my 2 brothers and I came up with plenty of ideas of uses for the little coloured bricks, from space stations to whole working towns (Well, in our imaginations anyway...).

We also went on a family holiday to Legoland in Denmark, each of us graduating from the Lego Driving School - probably my only memory of the holiday as I was pretty young.

But the company has moved on so much from then, opening Legoland Windsor and producing some of the most inventive, creative, advanced and, ultimately, fun toys around. Their online community is also second to none, drawing in the big kids as well as the young'ens - a great example of how PR can work for big brands.

The only drawback of Lego?

When you step on a piece, barefoot - ouch!

"And then one time, at PR camp..."

Heather over at the Greenbanana blog rightly points out that there really is more to PR than this:

"While an advertising executive would make up their own marketing message and put it on a billboard or in a commercial break, a publicist will try to inveigle theirs into a piece of journalism. They might offer an interview with a celebrity who is sponsored by their client; they might commission a survey related to their client's product and send out the findings; they might organise a newsworthy stunt and tell the media about it in advance."

I'm sure Sophie is a great PR practitioner, but somewhat ironically she is the one who falls prey to the 'spin' of the journalist in question - Leo Benedictus.

"I AM COOL" says a note stuck to one of the monitors, in case its owner might need reminding."

The article paints a picture of PR being all style and no substance, but perhaps that is the angle of a piece - to create a broad and superficial picture of a profession.

And another gem:

"When you've created this idea and you're ready to go and you've done your research and you sell it in [to a journalist] and get a feeling that it's gone well and then some big news story fills several pages inside and knocks your story out of the paper and there's no explanation you can give back to the client."

And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then... I can't even imagine how one of her press releases reads.

I hope other students who haven't been planning to go into PR aren't lured in to the profession under false expectations. For a more balanced view of just what a career in PR entails, read a few of the industry favourite blogs such as PR Blogger, PR Squared, PR 2.0, and the Greenbanana blog (of course).

The Secret Life of a Blog Post

Love this.

Carpe Diem

Recently lots of ideas for new projects/opportunities/general miscellany has passed through my mind, but (recently anyway) I haven't seized the moment and done anything about them. I was going to write a post on how I (and by extension, the readers of this blog) should seize the moment when a ideas come to them and act on them, on whichever way would make a good start.

Well now I seem to be eating my own words as someone took my idea from out of my own head and wrote on the very same subject. The hugely popular Seth Godin wrote a new post today, "Just Say It":

"Don't let the words get in the way. If you're writing online, forget everything you were tortured by in high school English class. You're not trying to win any awards or get an A. You're just trying to be real, to make a point, to write something worth reading.

So just say it."

Now I seem to have placed myself in some existentialist/ironic/self-deprecating black hole by "saying it" the instant that someone else tells me to "say it" through posting their on their own blog about how we should all stop worrying about the consequences and "just say it."

Lesson learned.

From now on I'll be "just saying it" more, to (hopefully) good effect.

Is that a ID3 tagged bell I hear tolling?

Over at Marketing Shift, John Gartner picks up on the demise of the music industry as many others have done (including me):

"Back in my day people boasted of their racks of vinyl and fawned over the album art like treasures from the Louvre. No more. First smaller CDs and now digital downloads has killed the physical connection with an "album." Being able to buy tracks one at a time has slaughtered the cash cow that enabled the music industry to sell entire albums based on 3 or 4 quality tunes. Many people now prefer access to entire music libraries over racks of CDs in the family room. The music industry must view this as an opportunity instead of a threat."

Is that a ID3 tagged bell I hear tolling?

Coffee: the good, the cheap and the fattening

Though I won't be giving up coffee any time soon, I will start being more choosy about which brand I use.

The Guardian reported today on which was the best high street coffee chain to use in an entertainingly titled post, "Coffee: the good, the cheap and the fattening" (though the article is actually much less than entertaining...).

Caffe Nero came out on top, which is great because I like their coffee.

The only problem is, working in the City where Pret and Starbucks chains are permanently within eye shot, Nero might not exactly be accessible to me...

Journalism - bound by the strings of the PR puppetmaster?

Gorkana run a feature section on journalists who have moved to the 'darkside'. In other words, those who have switched their career from journalism to public relations.

These career moves do make sense, given that the skills required are interchangeable and that PR itself runs on the premise that its practitioners have a good understanding of how the media works.

Reasons for batting for the other team that are given in the interviews include being "privileged to get access to a lot of strategic information and getting to discuss the key issues with the client at the highest level", "adding value to the communications process", and "wanting to play a more active role – rather than simply sitting on the sidelines, observing and passing judgement", emphasising the current passivity of journalism.

The reason that I went for a career in public relations rather than journalism is that journalism seems more and more to be falling into the hands of public relations professionals. It seems that most of the bulk of journalism that people read in the papers every day originates from a press release.

After doing work experience at The York Press, I was an expert at writing copy from press releases. Often, the news editor would come over with a sheet of white paper flapping in his hand and simply say "Turn this press release into an article, 400 words, by 3pm." Maybe it is just the regional press that is like this, but there seemed nothing more to the job than that.

Oh, and learning shorthand...

On the other hand, a lot of the quality and substantial journalism originates from journalists who are away from their desks, out in the real world meeting people and reporting on the news and current affairs, rather than sat by their desk, searching through emails for the one press release that can make up their copy that day.

These are the journalists that are digging for hard news, winning awards, and changing not only the face of journalism but the face of the world today.

I also believe that student journalism, being that it contains the future leaders of journalism, should be supported through as many channels as possible.

There are the Guardian Student Media Awards, the NUS Student Journalism Awards (which unfortunately was on hiatus in 2007), and various other smaller supporting schemes. But nothing substantial.

That's why I was pleased to see that the Student Journalism Blog had been established. Run by Dave Lee, the blog hopes to become the best source for student journalism news in the country.

I'll be visiting it often to see how the great and the good of student journalism is progressing and I hope you will too. Let's hope it leads to student journalism being given a higher profile and maybe even saving journalism as we know it for the near future.

More 'Moving to the darkside' interviews here.

Update: It seems that even ex-Army Officers are joining the PR fraternity.

Travel Tips: South Africa

I was at an open evening at the CIPR in Finsbury Square last week. Rather than talking about the membership benefits that come from joning the CIPR, I spent most of the time talking to Hassan about Cape Town, his home town, and what sights to see if I ever go there.

I received an email from him early the next morning with a whole host of great tips that I thought I'd share, just in case anyone is planning a holiday to South Africa soon. Here's what he sent me:

Try to go to the following restaurants:

Paranga www.paranga.co.za <http://www.paranga.co.za>
Baia <http://www.dining-out.co.za/member_details-MemberID-2093.html> <http://www.eatout.co.za/restaurants/restaurant_overview.asp?RestaurantID=3062>
Haiku <http://bukhara.com/haiku/>
Bukarha <http://bukhara.com/frameset_2.html>
La Colombe & Constantia Uitsig <http://www.uitsig.co.za/constantia_uitsig/uitsig.html>
96 Winery Road <http://www.96wineryroad.co.za/>
Moyo <http://www.moyo.co.za/content.asp?subID=50>
Balduccis <http://www.balduccis.co.za/>
Tokara www.tokararestaurant.co.za/ <http://www.tokararestaurant.co.za/>
95 Keerom www.95keerom.co.za <http://www.95keerom.co.za>
www.pigallerestaurants.co.za
www.fiveflies.co.za
http://www.metropolehotel.co.za - Veranda Restaurant

Wine Route in Stellenbosch which you must visit - www.spier.co.za

There's also Cape Quater http://www.capequarter.co.za which is an upmarket but small shopping complex in De Waterkant with quite a few restaurants including Tank.

If you like fish & sushi, go to www.the-tank.co.za

A visit to Cape Town is not complete by going to the www.12apostleshotel.com and having sundowners then dinner at one of their restaurant. The view is just beautiful.

V&A Waterfront
Go up Signal Hill & Devil's Peak. You can get up there by car.

Have a picnic at Boschendal wine-estate If you can, please go an see Mince at www.onbroadway.co.za. It's a drag show but really hilarious. For R80 you can go wrong. Book early via their website as tickets sell really fast. Try and book now if you can. This is Cape Town's most famous drag show. I've seen it three times. Each year they have a different theme.

"Starring KEIRON LEGACY & LILLY SLAPTSILLI
Every SUNDAY evening from 02 DECEMBER 2007
Flipping through their recipe books of yesteryear and combining those tried and tested successful dishes with ingredients consisting of flavours of today - Lilly Slaptsilli and Keiron Legacy are stirring up a frenzy with their new home-baked show 'Savoury Mince'. You will see some of the numbers they performed at the Dock Road Theatre 12 years ago (that have kept like well-preserved jam!) mixed with a few new numbers to add a little spice. As they poke fun at the cooking channel, the renowned divas will be adding a litre of this, a gram of that, half a cup of sugar, an ounce of chat. Will Tina Turner make a comeback? Will you see Eartha Kitt taking to the boards or even Jennifer Holliday ... mmm yummy! Don't miss what they are about to cook up this season! They return from a sold-out nationwide tour and are ready to entertain you yet again ... 'please sir, may I have some MORE?'

Tickets cost R80.00 each. You can also have dinner here before the show start but their menu isn't that great in terms of variety and options."

If you like Wiskey, go to The Bascule Bar at Cape Grace Hotel in the V&A Waterfront. If you want to go shopping and you tired of the Waterfront, go to Canal Walk www.canalwalk.co.za

Come Fly With Me

As reported on Techcrunch, this is unbelievable (also unbelievably risky...):

This morning, Richard Branson’s spaceship startup Virgin Galactic unveiled the second design of its suborbital vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two.

SpaceShipTwo is what the passengers will actually ride in, and White Knight Two is the launch vehicle that carries it to a high altitude before releasing the rocket. (It takes less energy to launch from 50,000 feet than from the ground). The design is a little bit different than the initial SpaceShipOne and White Knight One. Both are all carbon-composite vehicles, and are designed with an open architecture so that in the future other companies can use it as a foundation to create space vehicles for unmanned missions. White Knight Two is a double-hulled launch plane with four engines from Pratt & Whitney.

Branson suggests that if Virgin Galactic can prove the commercial viability of space flight, it will unlock a “wall of investment that could rival the amount invested in mobile or the Internet.” He also suggests that at some point in the future, in addition to suborbital thrill rides, the vehicle pair could serve as a superfast transport for point-to-point international travel here on Earth. (Forget about supersonic flight, this would be much faster). Looking much further out to a day when next-generation vehicles are flying commercially that can actually deliver small satellites and other payloads, he waxes about the possibilities:

One day we might be able to use space for energy production. While I believe aviation has to get more carbon efficient, seemingly benign industries like IT have outpaced aviation in carbon output. [One promise of a commercial space industry is] the ability to launch low-earth satellites that could literally take some of the heat out of the planet, by serving as a repository for information technology.

Although the flight rate will be low to start, the vehicle is designed to handle high flight rates several years from now. “The spaceship is being designed so that it can be flown twice a day and the launch plane can be flown three times a day,” says designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites. Virgin Galactic has ordered five spaceships from Scaled Composites, with an option of seven more. Rutan predicts that if Virgin Galactic is able to build 40 to 45 spaceships over first twelve years, with 15 launch planes, they could fly 100,000 people in the first twelve years of operation.

Virgin Galactic hopes to begin test flights this summer, but no mention of when commercial flights will actually start. With recession fears in the air, you’ve got to wonder what kind of impact that might have on demand for such premium-luxury travel.

No indicators for how much the price will be and if us mere mortals will be able to afford "suborbital thrill rides", but if Branson can dream about commercialising space flights, we can dream about affording one...

8 Ways To Be Great In 2008

I just came across a great website for Leaders in London, which is billed as "Europe's Premier Leadership Forum with over 1200+ attendees in 2007" and "One of the most important gatherings in the world" according to Professor Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School.

The January 2008 issue of their newsletter, Taking The Lead, contains 8 valuable lessons for those who lead, which should be rephrased as 8 invaluable lessons for those who want to lead.

Enjoy:

1. HOW TO MAKE YOUR TEAM GREAT

Treat people as if they are capable of great things. And many of them will prove you right.

“If you treat people as they are, they will stay as they are. But if you treat them as they ought to be, they will become bigger and better persons.” - Goethe

“Give people an ‘A’ in advance. We talk completely differently to someone we’ve given an ‘A’ to than to someone we’ve given a ‘C’ to; the ‘A’ is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.” – Ben Zander, talking at Leaders in London 2007.

2. LISTEN TO NEW AND RANDOM VOICES

“The best way to get good feedback is to randomise. The best feedback may come from the bottom of the organization.” – Steve Levitt, speaking at Leaders in London 2007.

“I used to hold meetings in the aisles of my supermarkets. Customers would constantly interrupt to talk to me, to give me feedback. Then I’d attend meetings back in the office with colleagues who spend all their time compiling customer research and wading through consumer behaviour reports. And I’d tell them things about our customers I’d picked up from random conversations in the aisles. And they’d say ‘We didn’t know that.’ “ - Feargal Quinn, founder, Superquinn supermarkets

3. CREATE A CULT, NOT A CULTURE

“The other magazines in the stable were so convinced we would flop, they called us ‘Folded’ instead of ‘Loaded’ during our pre-launch phase. I had no business training. But, I knew enough to create an environment where the team felt the world hated us (which wasn’t hard), so we could thrive off that. Like Alex Ferguson with Manchester United and Colonel Gadaffi with Libya.” – James Brown, Founder, Loaded magazine, speaking at Leaders in London 2007

“Incentives are the guts of economics. They’re not just about money. They’re about social pressure, adulation, and working for a cool organisation. Google is more cult-like than anything.” – Steve Levitt, as above

“There’s no such thing as company culture.” – Marcus Buckingham, as above

4. BE YOURSELF: DON’T ACT LIKE ‘A LEADER’

We tend to carry around ‘great man’ or ‘great woman’ archetypes in our heads – often without being aware of them. We feel that is what a leader should be. And then we feel we have to act like these mythical creatures when we come into a leadership position. Leadership may have worked like that once. It doesn’t now.

“Be very clear about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. Use the strengths you’ve got to be effective. But, don’t try to be something you’re not. Some leaders may feel they need to be a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Alexander the Great. Now, there’s a frightening thought. Be yourself.” – David Cameron, Leaders in London 2007

5. BE SLIGHTLY DELUDED

But only slightly.

“In 360 assessments, there is one group that is the most accurate about assessing their own performance versus how other people assess them. And that’s depressives. The most highly productive people, by contrast, are slightly positively deluded about how good they are. So, self-awareness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” – Marcus Buckingham, Leaders in London 2007

6. HOW TO SELL NEW IDEAS TO THE BOSS

(Unless you yourself are the group CEO, that is).

“Don’t sell novelty. That’s a high risk currency. Emphasise the benefits.” – Edward de Bono, Leaders in London 2007

7. ASK THIS QUESTION AT MEETINGS

“Insist that every meeting end with the question ‘What new ideas have you had since last we met?’ If the answer is ‘none’, then it has to be made clear to the people around the table who came up with no new ideas that they aren’t doing their job properly.” – Edward de Bono, as above, on how to lead for innovation

8. AND ONE ‘DON’T’…

“Don’t borrow strength from positional power. Leadership is…not a position. Gandhi never held a leadership position.” – Stephen Covey at Leaders in London 2007.

Perhaps the biggest admission of an inability to lead is to say or imply, “Because I said so” – issuing instructions and expecting compliance because of your position. Bright, questioning people – and they’re the people you want – no longer have automatic deference to a position. And they don’t like being told what to do.

The Leaders In London website is here and their blog is here.

Pandora-monium

A phoenix seems to have risen out of the flames of the Pandora debacle.

A new site called Global Pandora (recently written up by TechCrunch France) apparently allows you to access Pandora from anywhere in the world.

But, as soon as this post went live, it appears as though Global Pandora has been shut down… deadpooled until further notice.

Rubbish.

Doom and Gloom, but Room for PR

Yesterday is being deemed as another "black monday" as stock markets crashed around the world. The FT's John Authers noted that "Even with the US on holiday, the sell-off was the worst single day for global equity markets since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001."

So what does this mean for the Financial PR and corporate communications consultancies - Less business coming through the door? Job cuts? Smaller agencies disappearing all together?

Apparently not.

When all is doom and gloom around us, PR will be needed even more than usual according to Lord Chadlington, Group Chief Executive of Huntsworth.

In a letter to the FT defending the PR industry in times of recession, Lord Chadlington argues that:

"When the economy slides, transparency is increasingly demanded, making PR even more important than it is in good times. Consumer PR expenditure is underpinned as clients use it to compensate for reduced advertising spend; in financial PR, clients demand help to explain to shareholders weaker financial performance or staff cutbacks; and corporate PR tends to be used to boost the corporate brand to prevent bad news seeping into consumer behaviour.

While clients will always want to be sure that they really get value for their PR budget, based on my experience, very few would risk going into a downturn without the certain knowledge that they had tried and tested PR counsel at their elbow."

What is perhaps most interesting about Lord Chadlington's letter is his reference to the digital aspect of Financial PR, that "Monitoring blogs, building social networks and launching products on the internet are all the stuff of everyday life for today's PR practitioner and further boost income."

Online communciations will be a powerful tool over the coming year for companies wanting to explain weaker financial performances, both due to its low cost and ability to reach wide audiences.

I feel that many financial PR companies don't have a strong grasp on how to use this opportunity. As with all other PR sectors, those who embrace and innovate in online communications will be the ones who come out on top.

iPhone, therefore I am

It seems that the much-hyped Apple iPhone is failing in the UK - or at least not doing as well as expected, as reported in the FT today (here).

O2 declined to comment on the sales figures but said it was “delighted with the response to the iPhone, which has seen unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction”. The mobile operator also confirmed the iPhone was its fastest-selling handset “by a significant margin”.

It all sounds a bit desperate to me, especially when it was reported that iPhone partners O2 and Carphone Warehouse have been gagged by Apple, preventing them from reporting sales figures. Now the FT is reporting that un-gagged sources in O2 have confirmed a UK sales shortfall.

The main problem for Apple, according to the FT, is that the UK mobile market, like the US, is subsidised by the network operators. Consumers on monthly contracts often pay nothing for their handset. But the iPhone currently sells for £269, and that's not including the price of the contract.

I do really want one, despite the size (joke...), but will no doubt have to wait for the costs to come down. Steve Jobs has already said they will in time for the release of version 2 this year, a move which has angered everyone who bought the phone for its current extravagant price.

Gagging your network partners? Not great PR.

Most PR practitioners will agree that it was a mistake, but by admitting that sales have been falling short of expectation is a smarter move. I wonder what the iPhone story will unfold next? As with the matter of buying myself an iPhone, I think this one is a waiting game.

Following on from the "What I wish my new employee knew" post, Steven Silvers left an interesting comment on Todd Defrens' post at PR Squared:

"I’ve gotten a lot of notes from students and newbies since I wrote this. Most of them acknowledge that battle-savvy veterans like you and me are empathetic totheir challenges. But amazingly – and this business does not amaze me easily anymore – I’ve also heard from many young folks who take heated issue with our advice.

They complain that we’re not doing enough for them, that employers and clients should be more understanding of their tenderfeet. They argue that they should be given unlimited opportunities to discover themselves, that they should have a big say in how they spend their day so they can get the experience they think they want. They want us to appreciate that they don’t view the concept of work they way we do, that they aren’t going to take reading material home or invest theirown time in making themselves indispensable. They want us to accommodate the fact that they may still be deciding what they want to be when they grow up, even years after committing to an employer.

They seem surprised and agitated that they are being held accountable for their knowledge, their maturity, their performance and even the gossipy stuff they post on their social networking page when they go home at night.

And they seem genuinely surprised to find out that a probation period is a probation period – that their boss really does have God-like discretion to fire them for not fitting in, for not adding value, for being a screw-up.

Some of these young folks even have enablers – parents, friends, other interns and junior account executives who reinforce their entitlement mentality. I know of a recent situation where a doctor dad wrote a scathing letter to the president of a prominent firm insisting that had not given his new graduate daughter enough attention or proper training, and that he was an idiot for letting her go. In 25 years, I’ve never seen anything like that before.

I try to respond to newbies who have these ideas about the world. I tell them that they’re setting themselves up for disappointment, that they’re at a self-created disadvantage against the go-getters who want it more than they do.

Then I tell them to add one more rule to the many that old guys like me are suggesting they keep in mind as they launch their career:

“Nobody owes you anything. Nobody."

I find that this comment is as useful, if not more so, than the original post. Getting the perspective of PR bosses is indespensible for those of us starting out on a career, which can make us all feel more comfortable in the positions we are in.

But it is also really useful to be reminded that your position is not that comfortable, that you do have to work, and work hard, to get anywher ein this world, and that their boss "really does have God-like discretion to fire them for not fitting in, for not adding value, for being a screw-up."

Potentially scary stuff, but a good kick up the bum for those who are at a "self-created disadvantage against the go-getters who want it more than they do", the go-getters being myself and the other young PR practitioners blogging and networking away to (hopefully) successful careers in PR.

(Read more from Steven Silvers at his blog, here)

"What I Wish My New Employee Knew"

The University of Georgia’s Karen Russell recently used her “Teaching PR” blog to suggest “A dozen things I wish PR pros would blog about.”

It is my intention to cover all 12 of these topics in the next few weeks, but on Karen’s list was this question: “What I Wish My New Employee Knew.”

Various PR bloggers have posted responses to this post, which has proved invaluable to me as a PR executive barely four months into his career.

Here are the posts that resonated most with me, collected here both so I can constantly remind myself of them as I progress and also to help out those others who are just beginning, or about to begin, their PR careers. And who knows - perhaps I'll even write a post on "What I wish my new employer knew":

From PR Squared:

• I wish my new employee knew that Quality Counts. A typo in an email might not seem like a big deal. But it doesn’t take long for the client to wonder if that sloppiness extends to the way the agency is cultivating their image to the outside world.
• I wish my new employee knew that when I say I’ve got an open-door policy, it means swing by anytime you have a question about anything. I don’t bite. It’s not hard for me to offer two cents: it’s my job. And I love my job.
• I wish my new employee knew that the beginning part of a career is usually a slog. It’s not all Social Media fun & games, sorry. To be effective & accountable strategists, we need databases, research, detailed reports. That’s how everybody starts out, even the rockstars.
• I wish my new employee knew that “eagerness is everything.” If you’re eager; if you’re leaning forward; motivated, I’ll lie on the train tracks for you. If you’ve got a dark cloud over your head, its shadow casts a pall over the entire office. That includes my office.
• I wish my new employee knew that it’s all fun and games til you complain about working til 8 o’clock every night. Barring a huge project or crisis, we don’t want you working that late; it doesn’t impress us, it makes us question your efficiency. Following a string of late nights in our SF office, we began to require written permission from a manager if someone felt the need to work past 6:30pm. People began to leave on time. Productivity soared. So did morale.
• I wish my new employee knew that it’s okay to screw-up sometimes. The sooner you tell your manager, the smaller the screw-up will look in retrospect. If you never fall down, how can you learn to pick yourself back up?

From Austin Edgignton commenting on the original post:

• I wish my new employee new their overall importance to the success of the business. Too often new employees are governed by 'mushroom management', i.e.kept in the dark and fed bullshit. This tactic obviates any words of delight you may have uttered about their presence. The best way to make new employees of any level feel empowered and wanted is to allow them to understand exactly how what they are doing will add to the bottom line. This takes more than a few words, rather a committment to communications...something often lost in the day-to-day rock and roll of working in the communications industry.

From Lauren Vargas commenting on the original post:

• I wish my new employee new that one must learn to temper eagerness with respect.

Stuart Bruce discusses his favourites here and Des Walsh talks about managing Gen Y employees here.

More to be added when (if) I find them!

Dib dib dib - or spin, spin, spin?

The Telegraph reported today that modern scouts can now earn badges in public relations.

Those hoping to earn the new public relations badge, which will be available for explorer scouts aged 14 to 18, must give a talk to another organisation about scouting and secure media coverage for a scouting event.

I wonder what current PR practitioners should have to do to get themselves a badge in PR?
Perhaps 'pitching' a tent would be one of them? (please excuse the terrible pun...)

Richard at PR Studies suggests 'How to create smoke without fire?'

Anyone other ideas, please leave in the comments...

More coffee, please!

Why I'm not giving up coffee as a New Year's resolution:

From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.

From “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee” by Honore de Balzac

Read the whole piece here.

(And a kaffe latte med soya melk for Eva-Mari, please)

Not iPhone, but IpHONE

Walking past an 02 shop today with some friends:

Friend #1 (drooling) - "aah, the new iPhone - I want one sooo badly..."

Friend #2 - "Yeah, it look so good."

Me - "It's a bit big isn't it?":

(ha ha ha...)

It seems that yesterday's post was quite timely, as Media Guardian announced today that owners of digital music players will be able to copy music for their own use, according to government proposals.

Music falling on deaf ears?

First, Radiohead released their latest album on a pay-as-much-as-you-want basis. Now a top violinist is to release her latest album free of charge.

But then I received an email this morning from Tim Westergren, CEO of Pandora, informing me that their free internat radio service was beiong forced to stop broadcasting to UK-based users:

"As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists.

The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans... There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK."

A very good bit of PR from Pandora, having their CEO release a statement to all of its users explaining what has happened and what they are doing, or trying to do, about it.

But, as Duncan Riley argues:

"The stupidity of the RIAA continues to have little bounds, particularly when a decision like this forces a US company to stop streaming outside of the United States, and yet American owned companies based in the United Kingdom (like Last.fm) are free to stream music anywhere. The RIAA is costing the United States jobs and investment by regulations that will force innovative companies like Pandora in the future to only set up overseas, or never set up at all."

Whilst music artists are leading the music industry into a new and exciting era, innovating new ways of reaching audiences yet still retaining commercial success, it seems that the organisations that govern the music industry and the record labels themselves are failing to adapt to this new era, or at least not being willing to adapt if profits aren't immediately available.

Perhaps rather than losing the business or Radiohead et al to the digital revolution, the bosses of the major record labels need to work with these innovative artists in order to find a way forward.

Add to this that Napster has also joined the move away from copy protected music, isn't it time that the record labels faced the music?

Seth Godin also talks about the collapse of the music industry here.

Free admission with this ticket

This year, I hopefully will remember Garr Reynold's advice - "Eat like a bird and poop like an elephant."

Great stuff...

Redefining how to make a mistake?

Jeff Jarvis posted an interesting defense of Facebook over at his Buzz Machine blog last week.

He argues that Facebook is "redefining how to make a mistake". In an age where people vote on how successful a site is through clicks, web companies have to engage with their audiences or risk losing them. Facebook users complained about the newsfeed, but Zuckerberg explained what it was and users realised it was a good thing.

Another case in point is Facebook announced the ad program, they didn’t include enough privacy controls for the users. But after conversation with their users, they added those controls and improved the service to their users.

In a similar vein, HSBC were reminded of the power of Facebook when they were forced to change the terms of their student accounts after a protest group was set up on Facebook.

Whilst a lot of social media discussion is focussing around Facebook at the moment, I think that these examples can be applied to a wider sphere and serve as a reminder of the essentials of good communciation, especially in the Web 2.0 era - engaging in conversation with your customers/users, explaining clearly why changes are taking place and the benefits (and disadvantages) that the changes bring, and take stock of the messages coming through from thses conversations.

I don't think Facebook is redefining how to make a mistake, but merely how to recognise, react and respond when a mistake is made.

Back of the net...

Received an invite to the 'President's Weekend' of the mighty University of York Athletic Football Club (UYAFC) today, where all the old boys from down the years return to York to take on the current team in a, ahem, "friendly" game of footy (the photo is of last year's event).

I've played in the last three of these games, and I can honestly say that fitness is the key factor in determining who wins.Given that this is the only match that most of the old boys will play this year, the current York side have got to be favourites.

Indeed, I played a game this Saturday and seemed to be weighed down by the excessive turkey and mince pies I ate over the Christmas holidays, which means I'll have to dig out my running trainers from the bottom of my wardrobe.

At least I have a colleague to inspire me, who clocked up a 9 mile run this weekend in training for the London Marathon. But with the potential glory of victory or the humiliation of defeat in sight, perhaps that is all the inspiration I need.

First Great PR of the Year...

When I first moved to London back in the summer, I realised there was such much to do on any given day that I needed a quick way of finding out what to do (and when, where, why, and how much...).

That's when a friend suggested I buy Time Out, what was known as her 'Bible of London Life'. And has they happened to be running a very generous offer of 12 issues for a mere 100 English pennies, I thought I'd take them up on the offer.A

nd it all went swimmingly - received my first issue that next Wednesday and was impressed with the range of the events they covered and the quality of the writing inside.

But I felt that after the 12 issues were up and the offer ended, I couldn't justify paying the much higher price. So, instead of forgetting to cancel my subscription (which is how I imagine they get a lot of 'accidental' subscribers and run the offer in the first place...), I cancelled my subscription 3 issues early via email.

To my surprise, I received an email a few hours later:"We are sorry to hear you are cancelling your subscription. You still are due to receive 3 more issues, which you will not be charged for."

What great PR that is - an email promptly replied to, from a human, and letting me have the full length of the offer even though I had cancelled my subscription early.

Because of this, perhaps I will renew my subscription to Time Out in the future...

'Fun'-draising

(Tried to make that title into some sort of fantastically witty pun, but failed miserably...)

Visitors to this brand-spanking-new blog might well notice a box in the sidebar and wonder what it's all about. Well, let me explain a bit more about it...

I have been asked by Camp Quality, the charity I volunteer for, to co-direct an activity holiday for children with cancer. The holiday takes place on 16th-23rd August in Chamonix, France and will cost the charity approximately £15,000 to take around 30 children and volunteers along.Camp Quality ensures that both Campers and Volunteers don't pay anything for their holiday, but raising £500 will pay for a child to go along.

The box is a widget developed by Just Giving, "the easy and efficient way to donate and raise money for charity (!)", that links through to my fundraising page. By adding the widget to the blog, it gives another outlet for people to donate to my cause.

So far, I have only sent out the details of the page to maybe 10 people, as Just Giving suggested:
"Before sending an email to your entire address book, asking your closest friends and family to donate first. An empty page can be a little intimidating, so do make sure to capture a couple of donations before contacting your entire list of potential sponsors. People tend to match the amounts already listed on the page, so do target your most generous supporters first!"

And, to my surprise, my brother, Greg, kindly donated £20 literally within 90 minutes of me sending out an email (what a legend!). I was so surprised that someone had donated in such a short period of me having set up the page that I matched the donation myself.

Since then, a few more people have donated so now I'm going to publicise my fundraising efforts to my Facebook friends and my various email contacts. Hopefully the total will really take off soon.

If you're reading this blog, please feel free to donate too!

About

This blog will be mainly focused on PR and Communications, but also take in anything else that takes my interest (which, as you'll see, is very wide ranging...).

About lil' old me:

By day, I work in the Digital Media practice for Hotwire, a technology PR firm, working with clients such as O2, Be Broadband and FT.com.

I am currently Secretary of the children's cancer charity, Camp Quality UK, where I generally look after the communications aspects of the charity.

I am an ex-Editor of the award winning student newspaper, York Vision, and retain a vested interest in all things student journalism and the media in general.

I am also a coffee-drinking, football-playing, gym-going, McSweeneys-reading, London-living, lovin'-living kind of guy.

Why Pudding Relations?

Well, upon getting my first job after graduating from uni, my dear old Dad sent me a congratulations card. On the front was a picture of a toddler in a chef's hat, licking a spoon full of cake mix and getting more on its face than in its mouth:

A simple message was left inside:

"I assume by PR you mean Pudding Relations!"


(Disclaimer: This blog does not reflect the opinions of my employer, persons or companies I mention, or anyone else. It is merely my own thoughts, ideas, and insights. If there is something on this blog that bothers you, please contact me and I'll sort it out before it gets messy)